Columns

Last week, the LaFollette Press published a story about the controversial snake-handling practices of Pentecostal pastor Andrew Hamblin and his congregation at Tabernacle Church of God (“Snake Salvation,” Aug. 8).

It is true that the law requires all drivers to have a certain amount of insurance coverage to pay for harms and injuries they cause in an accident. In Tennessee, the law says we all have to have a minimum of $25,000 per person injured, up to $50,000 per accident. Unfortunately, not everyone has insurance.
According to the latest figures from the Insurance Research Institute, 24 percent of Tennessee drivers have no insurance.

To me, it seems accidental, but that’s because I thought I had other plans.

Really. After a few summers of ER reruns when I was a kid, I was going to be a trauma physician, but then I realized I don’t have the tolerance for blood, guts and other bodily fluids. These days, I get my thrill from the couch with a blanket and my ER DVDs.

When I was about 7, I watched Saved by the Bell with my older sister. The 90s sitcom made adolescence seem like so much fun. And the teenage characters looked like the coolest people I could meet. At the time, I didn’t realize the show wasn’t the most accurate portrayal of high school.
I spent a lot of my time as a child wanting to be a teenager. For me, the next phase of life represented a place where I would be able to experience more fun and joy.
Then I became a teenager. Those years weren’t miserable. But I didn’t go to Bayside either.

Charles Dickens once wrote: “There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”
This is true, especially when you are running around a goat pen for hours on end to no avail.
There is a point in which you just have to wipe away the tears and sweat and just laugh—or so I am told—because this has never happened to me.
But allow me to share with you—in case of emergency—the best way to catch a goat:

“Instead of being adversaries to government power [the Washington, D.C media] are servants to it and mouthpieces for it.”
So said the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald who broke the story of Edward Snowden’s disclosure of NSA spying on the American people, after Greenwald’s confrontation with Meet the Press’s David Gregory.
Greenwald needn’t have limited his observation to the D.C. media. Plenty of reporters and cable-news talking heads are playing the same role in the NSA drama.

Roll the stone away, let the guilty pay–it’s Independence Day. Martina McBride may not have been talking about the Fourth of July, but the song is applicable on our national day of celebration.
As a conservative, I believe July 4 is the most important day in our country’s history.
Yes, we will always remember 9-11, D-Day, Pearl Harbor Day, Memorial Day and many other significant days we commemorate, but without Independence Day, there is no America.
There is no land of the free.
There is no home of the brave.

Lose an eyebrow, burn a hole in your shirt, and scare the dog. It’s time for fireworks.
Several tents have popped up in the area and the window displays at the brick and mortar stores seem just a little brighter this time of year. You can buy one get one, get them all half off, mix and match, and blow every last dime to buy the monster variety pack.
But where did they come from? And just who was the first person to spark a firework?